Jamming, Carrier Drones, Commando Tech Get Big Pentagon Research Cash

This Cold War-era ALQ-184 jammer pod is on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, so it's no wonder the military's working on a next-next-gen replacement. Photo: U.S. Air Force

One of the big promises of the new Pentagon defense budget is to “protect investments in key technology areas and new capabilities” despite congressional funding pressures. Sift through the details of the massive research budget for the military’s tech wish list and some of those priorities become clear: jamming, non-lethal weaponry, and gear for special-operations forces, to name a few.

One of the biggest winners in Pentagon research cash is the Next-Generation Jammer, a Navy effort to build a super-advanced aircraft pod for disrupting adversary communications. The jammer, which is anticipated to send malicious code into enemy computer networks as well as remotely detonating homemade bombs, is the recipient of a big cash infusion: the Navy’s boosting research funding for it to $258 million from $167 million.

The Navy doesn’t expect to actually buy the new jammers until after 2019, said Rear Adm. Joseph Malloy, a top Navy budget official. Until then, the Navy’s jamming jets, the EA-18G Growler — another big winner in the Pentagon’s new budget — will retain the same ALQ-99 jammer pods they currently use.

Around the same time as the Next-Generation Jammer is expected to come online, the Navy hopes to have another advanced technology roaming the seas: the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike System, a killer drone that can launch from an aircraft carrier. The demonstrator model for the program, the X-47B, is prepping for a May takeoff at sea aboard the USS George H.W. Bush, and the Navy just announced that it wants to pick the drone’s ultimate airframe. So maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Navy is asking for an additional $24 million in research cash for what will be the most advanced drone known to man (or machine).

It might not also come as a surprise that the military’s elite special-operations forces are also on the receiving end of new research cash, given the anticipated need for them to become more of a “global force” after the Afghanistan drawdown, per Pentagon comptroller Robert Hale. The mysteriously named “Special Operations Advanced Technology Development” gets $46.8 million — while a different budget line, “Special Operations Technology Development,” gets $29.2 million, up a bit from the previous year. Unspecified “Operational Enhancements” get another $42.6 million.

Somewhat less obviously, the Pentagon wants Congress to give it $51.1 million for its Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Testing, a family of heat beams, sound blasters, dazzlers and other things that can hurt but not kill you. (One of them shot me in a test last year.) These systems have been tested a lot more than they’ve actually been deployed, but the Pentagon is asking for nearly $7 million more for the less-lethal tech than it did last year. Applied non-lethal weapons research gets another $6 million, a slight increase, and another $11.8 million is intended for non-lethal weapons development.

Not every research account is getting more money, of course. A noteworthy one that’s receiving less money: the Prompt Global Strike project, an effort to blast any target on Planet Earth with a non-nuclear missile. Prompt Global Strike has its, er, risks: nuclear powers that see missiles streaking over their territory might think the missiles carry nukes and respond with an actual nuclear strike. While Pentagon officials last year boasted of creating a submarine-based Prompt Global Strike, the current budget proposes slashing research funding for the effort by nearly half, to $65 million.

Sounds like relieving news. Until you remember that sometimes R&D funding declines because the Pentagon is ready to buy the stuff it’s been developing.